Topic: looking for store street pics (Read 13101 times)

Found these two pics on this website last week. Weird, but the website is now down. I did not scour the Store Street thread to see if they have been posted before, so forgive me if a duplicate posting.

Matt Arnott, Kamloops, B.C.

"I would prefer to see it shipped by train..."

Re: looking for store street pics

« Reply #182 on: Sep 7th, 2016, 7:34am »

Good find. That be the Janion Hotel with Ramsay Machine Works beyond at 1630 Store Street, ca,1957. "Cathelco" on the Ramsay building was a branch of the operation dealing in marine, electrolytic installations through Vancouver Island.

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Re: looking for store street pics

« Reply #183 on: Sep 7th, 2016, 2:13pm »

Yes a good find indeed especially the photo of the train switching Swifts Meats. Any photo of that is rare. I was never lucky enough to see a train on that spur but seeing the overhang of the locomotive in the photo and from memory I think the curve scales out to about 16 inch radius in HO scale. There is a prototype for everything.

« Last Edit: Sep 7th, 2016, 2:30pm by Goose5 »

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Re: looking for store street pics

« Reply #184 on: Sep 9th, 2016, 1:27am »

Thanks guys, yes I was pleased to discover them. Thanks also for the additional info of the building history. I think I had been google searching "Canadian National Railway in Penticton BC" looking for something else when waaaay down the image lists came these photos. I love the guy riding the roof of the car in the first photo

Re: looking for store street pics

« Reply #187 on: Sep 12th, 2016, 4:46pm »

There are a few photos in Robert Turner's various E&N books showing a brakeman riding the roof of a boxcar. Must have been a fairly common practice back in the day.

Boxcar surfing. It was easier for the engineer to see crew members give hand signals from on top of the cars than on the side of the car. That practice went the way of the dodo with the use of portable radios and now you'd be fired if you ride on top of a car.

« Last Edit: Sep 12th, 2016, 4:48pm by cn2220 »

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Tyler

Long live the GE`s!!!!

Re: looking for store street pics

« Reply #188 on: Sep 12th, 2016, 8:06pm »

Hi, everyone,

The practice of boxcar surfing goes back to the earliest days of railroading, when each car had to be individually braked. Trains were quite short by today's standards, but still too heavy to be braked by the engine brakes alone. There were two brakemen assigned to each train. The head brakeman rode in the locomotive cab with the engineer and fireman, and the rear brakeman rode in the caboose with the conductor.

Each car had a brake wheel mounted at one end. In the early days the wheel was horizontal, attached to a vertical shaft and about waist-high to the brakeman standing on the roof of the car. At a prearranged signal, the two brakemen would begin at opposite ends of the train and work their way toward each other along the rooftop catwalks, tightening the brakes on each car in succession. In some photos, the brakeman has what looks like a billy club in his hand. This was a "cheater" for extra leverage, if the brake wheel was a bit balky. (In later years, the brake wheel was vertical, mounted on one car end just below the roofline.)

"Telltales" were leather straps or lengths of rope suspended from a pole extended above the track, a short distance before a bridge, tunnel entrance, or other overhang. Its purpose was to give the brakeman a good whack if he became distracted, so he would have time to "hit the deck" before making (usually fatal) contact with the obstruction.

The invention of air brakes in the 1880s gradually phased out the need for brakemen to walk the planks every time the train needed to slow or stop, but switching operations still often required the brakeman's individual attention. Freight cars were equipped with catwalks and ladders well into the 1960s.

cn2220 is quite correct. Today's freight cars no longer have catwalks or ladders to the roofline, and employees are not permitted to put themselves at risk in ways that were routine several decades ago. Brake wheels are within a few feet of the ground, and the remnants of ladders are only a few rungs high.

Interesting to see a CNR refrigerator car being switched at Swift Meats

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Re: looking for store street pics

« Reply #190 on: May 29th, 2017, 7:51pm »

The most interesting thread in my opinion has been pretty quiet for awhile. Does anyone have pics of when the GP38s were used to switch Store St after the yard switcher left Victoria? I know they were used a few times and even derailed one morning by the via station with the cars holding up morning traffic on Store St. Somebody must have pics?